[Announcement] Black Gold Fraud

[snailgameusa]

Dear players,

It has recently come to our attention that there has been some credit card fraud by certain accounts in BGO. We at Snail wanted to make an announcement to aware the whole community that we hold a zero tolerance policy for fraud.

We strongly believe that this is not the act of are loyal and committed fans, but related to the in-game spammers and gold sellers. Appropriate actions have and will continue to be taken.

Snail holds a zero tolerance policy on fraud of this type. Accounts that are found to be guilty of fraud or fraud related activities are subject to permanent freezing at Snail's discretion.

This type of malicious behavior threatens the BGO monetization system, and the in-game economy to the detriment of all players. We strongly advise players to not interact with spammers and to avoid making purchases through non-official channels.

We have temporarily suspended the in-game Voucher and BG purchasing channels. Fans who still want to top-up their accounts can use our Snail Member Center as before.

We ask that players who encounter suspicious behavior or have reason to believe illegal activity has taken place please report it to our in-game GMs, and contact our support team either through direct PM on the Forum or at support@snailgamesusa.com

Thanks to everyone for their support,

The BGO Team

[Dave69ers]

We have temporarily suspended the in-game Voucher and BG purchasing channels. Fans who still want to top-up their accounts can use our Snail Member Center as before.??

Have i missed something here so we can not change vouchers for gold, so then there is no point in us topping our account up with vouchers!!!!

As the game relies on Black Gold bought with vouchers that have been bought with real money, then the game will grind to a halt with the economy crippled and no money coming in to pay the Devs or GM's wages. Plus of course we wont be able to purchase items or sell items in the auction house due to the lack of new in game black gold

Please get Hackshield that checks every single account and application for add ons, cheat or duplicator programs and macros, it wont stop every hacker, but it certainly prevents most spammers, gold sellers, speed and power hacks, I don't have any axe to grind, just one of the oldest (in RL) and longest mmo players still playing, I say this from experience and am not connected in any way to the company that runs Hackshield Professional, its just simply light years ahead of Gameguard for protecting your game and therefor your and our money.

http://hackshield.ahnlab.com/hs/site/en/main/main.do

go to this link and read.

[Dave69ers]

I have had further thoughts on this since posting my first reply.

Do you realize that the only way of getting Black Gold now, is via the Gold Sellers outside the game by doing this. The very thing you "say" you are trying to block seems to now be getting your full support. People simply are not buying lower gear from the AH because of the lack of official Gold.

Or do the Developers own the Gold Selling sites?

Any way as I now have vouchers that you have sold me, that I now cant use, and I refuse totally to buy game gold from an outside source, I guess like others I must stop playing until you sort this mess out, as I can not buy extra slots in my storage or back pack for the extra items, and the extra upgrade fine boxes go to waste as I can not buy any upgrade gear from the AH nor pay some one to make them.

So I wish you all the best of luck with this game, as up until now I enjoyed it. I will of course pop back as soon as I see you have done something.

[snailgameusa]

Dave69ers,

I think there may be a few things you're confused on, so allow us to clarify a bit.


The in-game channels have been removed, but players can still purchase both Black Gold and the Vouchers from our website. The issue with this was related to the reliability of the system. We implemented the in-game system to allow for the most convenient channel for fans to get the resources they want, rather than having to open a browser. However, we discovered the system is open to abuse, and we needed to temporarily remove that so as to avoid continued fraud.

Fans are still able to get both Black Gold and Vouchers from the official channel on our website, so the claims you made about the in-game economy grinding to a halt and fans flocking to the gold sellers is really totally inaccurate.


In fact, the issues with the lack of player-to-player trade in the Auction House, an issue you've mentioned below, is caused by the Gold Spammers. These companies previously essentially operated by running bots to farm resources and Time Vials, selling those on the Auction House, and then selling the Black Gold to people for real money. This had a fairly damaging effect on the economy, with real people being crowded out of the Auction House for selling gear and materials they'd acquired legitimately. We've eradicated those bots and prevented this method from being used, and the economy is recovering from it.


The current issue is in regards to fraud. The gold spammers are essentially committing serious credit card fraud in order to acquire Black Gold and resell it to players. As this is in fact not only a game violation but actually a crime, we are working to rectify the situation. We'll say again: We encourage all players to avoid these gold spammers, as they are damaging to the game itself, and have also been associated with a handful of account hacking incidents.


Thank you for the suggestion and the link to Hackshield. We are working on developing the systems necessary to block the spammers and hackers, and to fix this problem so everyone can continue to enjoy the game.

[7398573]

I like this game ..but i just lost like 9 K honor bcuz my computer wont start work ..and there is a monday reset thingy ...just to bad i wanted to climb the ranking charts..and be a hero or something .well there it goes.
i gues i have to let go of this game.

[XXX__Groggy__XXX]

One of my accounts was frozen.
I have received little cooperation from SnailGames to identify why,
except to be told that "fraud" was involved with refunded money.
I Only used CVS cash cards to top up, through the official BGO website.
Xsolla, the company involved with all of my transactions has cleared my account of any refunds or wrongdoing.
Xsolla attempted to clear the account with Snail Games, but was unable to as well.
As far as I am aware, my account is not involved with any fraudulent action, so if there is someone who hacked my account, I would like to know when and how.

I have provided my real life name and phone number for response, but apparently Snail Games does not make long distance phone calls from China, and the California office apparently has no connection to the game itself.

I find it rather distasteful that I am accused of fraud, banned from play, and not given any knowledge of why I was banned, except "we confirm that we have proof of refund" - which is not possible on a CVS cash card.

If you are going to maintain a zero tolerance policy, you should at least be able to substantiate your claim of fraud to a paying player of the game.

Your response is welcome.
Slice - currently frozen - since Labor Day.

[XXX__Slice__XXX]

Thank you for unfreezing my account.

I guess I am unable to obtain all of the online and sign on bonuses for the last month that I have been on ice, including the last two pieces of labor day costume to complete my set. I am many medals, fine template fragments, crystals and standard boxes away from my other accounts which were started and run together with this one (scorch and brute) and can be used as a reference to items lost. Obviously I will need to earn their level on my own.

I am however wondering what happened to all of my mail.
It seems that when you froze my account, you didn't freeze my mailbox, and now pages of mail including items, materials, power jewels, and recipes are missing.
I have also been kicked from my guild, losing all the guild merit built up to date.

Is there any way to recover these items?

I will again thank you for unfreezing my account,
but I ask kindly, may I have my in game property restored to me as well.

I will remind you that I was unjustly frozen, with an unsubstantiated claim of fraud,
to which I am still eagerly awaiting a phone conversation - you have my number.
Sincerely,
Slice.

[7575348]

Topic and thread Runescape Gold can be used interchangeable. Though the software used to host these forums is using the word "topic", not all forums use this word and some use the word "thread" to mean the same Fifa Ultimate Team Coins thing.

[IWidowMakeRI]

It seems the official site as well is having issues. Have tried to purchase using paypal and its giving a connection error and not allowing me to purchase via that channel either. Seems there is alot of issues with trying to give money to support the game.

[InquiryAgentJack]

Greetings WidowMakeR!

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Please contact our support team with your issue. You can contact our support team at support@snailgamesusa.com

It doesn't seem as if this issue has been brought up yet, so you may be the first person to experience the issue with PayPal. I'll also be contacting our Operation's Team to see if they had scheduled a maintenance for the payment systems.

Best Regards,
InquiryAgentJack